Bernadette is on the Best Lawyers 2018 list for Telecommunications Law.

Finalist in Euromoney’s Asia Women in Business Law Awards 2015 (Best in TMT).

Bernadette is a partner in Gilbert + Tobin's TMT group. She has advised some of Australia’s largest companies across financial services, mining, energy, oil and gas, health, transport, retail, government, telecommunications and technology.

This includes advising on projects that are complex and transformational in nature with multiple dependencies, posing significant risks and challenges across the organisation. Key areas of focus include: As-A-Service and cloud strategies, outsourcing, shared services, sourcing, data protection and privacy, off-shoring, application development and management (ADM), technology investment and vendor management.

Over the past 12 months, Bernadette has advised on some of the most significant transformation and technology deals in the Asia Pacific region, including:

Advising a global resources company on a pioneering deal to transform its core enterprise IS&T systems to a global "As-A-Service" offering, based in the cloud. This is one of the largest As-A-Service cloud projects undertaken by a global corporation in the AsiaPac region to date.

Advising a Big-4 Australian Bank on a large-scale global IT project, and in relation to a number of cloud transactions.

Advising an LNG resources company on the establishment of its ERP systems.

Advising a major Australian telecommunications carrier on the establishment of new data centres to support its cloud arrangements.

Advising NSW Health in relation to its ongoing e-health strategy, including its Electronic Medical Management project.

Bernadette is recognised as one of Australia's leading lawyers advising on large-scale corporate transformation projects. Her accolades include being:

Listed in major legal directories such as Chambers Asia Pacific 2017, Asia Pacific Legal 500, 2016 and Best Lawyers 2015.

She is described as "very capable in discussing contractual challenges on a business basis with a firm commercial perspective." (Chambers Asia Pacific 2016).

Commended as being "superb technically, and very aware of and focused on corporate strategy." (Chambers Asia Pacific 2015).

A Finalist in 2015 Euromoney Legal Media Group Asian Women in Business Law Awards.

Bernadette has completed degrees in law, commerce and music (piano performance). She previously qualified as a chartered accountant and worked as a taxation consultant for one of the Big 4 chartered accounting firms.

Bernadette's Areas of Expertise

Bernadette's Insights

Managing copyright in today’s digital world is becoming incredibly complex. Does blockchain create new options for managing copyright and other rights in relation to content? Is blockchain just a solution looking for a problem, or is there something more to it? This article explores the potential to substantially re-engineer the complexities of copyright management with a blockchain solution.

Going agile is a discipline – and in fact, best practice agile methodology requires far greater discipline than traditional projects. While there are also disaster stories around agile – projects running over time and over budget – many of those problems arise where there are failures in the implementation of best practice agile methodologies and disciplines.

Smart contracts have the potential to signiﬁcantly alter the commercial, legal and regulatory landscape. Bernadette Jew and Peter Reeves of Gilbert + Tobin, and George Samman of Sammantics consultancy, analyse the opportunities smart contracts could bring, the challenges that need to be addressed, and how smart contracts could enable corporate digitisation.

This paper discusses the differences between private shared ledgers and public blockchain to support commercial consortia. It then identifies the critical choices to be taken in forming a consortium, including the necessary components of a governance and operational framework.

Lawyers in TMT practices are confronting some of the most challenging issues of our time, while navigating the fast-changing demands of clients in search of more value. Ben Abbott from Australasian Lawyer chats to Bernadette Jew in this feature.

Gilbert + Tobin today announced that it is advising Primary Health Care (Primary) on the sale of its health technology division, Medical Director for $155 million to private equity fund, Affinity Equity Partners.